Walk into Lombardi Fruit & Imports Co. in Syracuse, a place filled with products shipped in from Italy, and you feel the energy of Butternut Street as it once was. The business retains many customers with voices straight from the Old World, men and women who might be looking for olive oil soap or Marco Polo Roasted Peppers.

Dominick Lombardi, whose family has owned the store for decades, hardly sees the Old World when he goes to the window. Instead, he looks upon a corner blown out long ago by fast-food restaurants and dueling, suburban-style drugstores, which leads to one of the strangest sights in Syracuse: Two boxlike Rite Aids, both in business, on opposite sides of the same intersection.

That corner, stripped of soul, speaks to a collapse in civic planning. Yet Dominick has the gift of the longtime Syracusan: He has the ability to see a struggling district as it used to be. He spoke softly of the old Haberle Congress brewery, now long gone, once a Butternut Street neighbor. Or the Chicago Market. Or a nearby pool hall that had plenty of customers.

While much has vanished, Dominick retains his passion for the street.

"We still get people from all over," he said. "We've got no problems."

Butternut street has suffered in the same way as much of the city. While some of the changes carry hope -- such as the Asian businesses that occasionally move into empty storefronts -- there are too many vacant buildings with boarded-up windows. The challenge is clear for whoever becomes the new mayor of Syracuse in November's election.

"The people who lived here for all those years pretty much died, and their kids sold their houses and stores and moved away, and the properties turned into rentals," said Jim Giaquint, 64, whose dry cleaning store is a longtime anchor at Butternut Circle.

The spark of a turnaround lies in such institutions as the Community Bakery, which offers the regular aroma of fresh-baked bread. Then there's the Italian Chef pizzeria; it moved into a building that once held the Buttercup Bakery, a neighborhood landmark.

Ricardo Testa, 46, an Italian Chef manager, said he thinks Butternut hit its worst point about six years ago. He's noticed subtle improvements on a street that was still vibrant, if slipping, when he was a boy.

As a child, he would hang around at LaRosa's, a little coffee shop and arcade where the owner allowed the kids to play "foosball." He joins with much of the North Side in celebrating the sweet memory of fresh doughnuts at the Buttercup.

And he recalls a small place run by a woman all the kids called "Mama." She was "an old-timer who used to cook us up some food," Ricardo said. "She had groceries and everything."

While he mainly recalls the 1970s, plenty of folks remember an earlier era when the trolley still ran along Butternut, an era when neighborhood kids used to catch their movies at The Acme -- a theater replaced years ago by a building that now holds the offices of the Syracuse Teachers Association.

The old Acme Theatre: Until it burned, a beloved Butternut Street institution.Onondaga Historical Association

George and Betty Sterzer, a brother and sister who live in the house where they were raised on Helen Street, were regulars for matinees at The Acme. Betty, 90, had an uncle who'd always bring his cat to the movies. The children would buy their candy at a little shop across from the White branch library.

Neighborhood women would shop for their best clothes at Jane's dress shop, Betty said. When a child wanted a treat, the place to go was the Rapp Drugstore, later known as Kress Drugs. It provided ice cream sundaes for children who'd converge from the many schools in the neighborhood: Our Lady of Pompei. Garfield. North High School. Franklin.

Ann Corcoran, 69, grew up on the 700 block of Butternut Street. She was always in the White library, which remains a centerpiece of the neighborhood. With her friends, she would go sledding in Schiller Park. Like many boys and girls from Our Lady of Pompei, she took part in the Rev. Charles Borgognoni's theatrical Pompeian Players.

A favorite pizza stop was Tino's, on North Salina Street. "All the kids from high school" would hang out at the Cozy Retreat, on Park Street, she said. Crowds of children hurried each day from store to store along Butternut, and many teens from North High would go there once classes let out.

"Today, for so many of the kids, everything is alcohol or parties or video or computers," Ann said. "But we used to have the best times."

Stephana Mollica Laury, 82, remembers running every day to a little cigar shop at Butternut and Salina streets, where she'd buy her father two packs of Camels for a quarter. She remembers the many doctors and dentists who had offices on upper levels of the brick buildings on nearby North Salina Street. She particularly remembers an old woman who ran a little produce store; for years, after the woman's husband died, she dressed in black each day.

The old Kress drugs on Butternut Street: When teens floated a float or a sundae, that was the place.Onondaga Historical Association

George Sterzer, 78, can close his eyes and rattle off the businesses that lined Butternut during his childhood. He vividly recalls seeing "The Adventures of Robin Hood," with Errol Flynn, at The Acme. He spoke of Reese's Photography, the Liederkranz Hall, Heck's Meat Market -- and all the kids who would go bowling in the alleys at Mount Tabor church.

While a hubbub of different cultures mingled on the sidewalks, parents had no fear about allowing their children to spend hours on Butternut. It was due to the one quality, beyond all others, that George misses in the city:

"People enjoyed each other," he said. That was enough to make it work.